Government Response to the Shakespeare Review & G8 Open Data Charter

Paul Maltby Director of Open Data and Government Innovation Cabinet Office G8 Open Data Charter committed countries to 5 open data principles

**Principle 1: Open Data by Default**

- establish an expectation that all government data be published openly by default, as outlined in this Charter, while recognising that there are legitimate reasons why some data cannot be released.

**Principle 2: Quality and Quantity**

- release high-quality open data that are timely, comprehensive, and accurate. To the extent possible, data will be in their original, unmodified form and at the finest level of granularity available;

- ensure that information in the data is written in plain, clear language, so that it can be understood by all, though this Charter does not require translation into other languages;

- make sure that data are fully described, so that consumers have sufficient information to understand their strengths, weaknesses, analytical limitations, and security requirements, as well as how to process the data; and

- release data as early as possible, allow users to provide feedback, and then continue to make revisions to ensure the highest standards of open data quality are met. Principle 3: Usable by All

- release data in open formats wherever possible, ensuring that the data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes; and

- release as much data as possible, and where it is not possible to offer free access at present, promote the benefits and encourage the allowance of free access to data. In many cases this will include providing data in multiple formats, so that they can be processed by computers and understood by people.

Principle 4: Releasing Data for Improved Governance

- share technical expertise and experience with each other and with other countries across the world so that everyone can reap the benefits of open data; and
- be transparent about our own data collection, standards, and publishing processes, by documenting all of these related processes online.

Principle 5: Releasing Data for Innovation

- work to increase open data literacy and encourage people, such as developers of applications and civil society organisations that work in the field of open data promotion, to unlock the value of open data;
- empower a future generation of data innovators by providing data in machine-readable formats. Government Response to Shakespeare Review set out a three pronged approach to releasing further open data

**National Information Infrastructure**

Make explicit the main departmental data through the ‘National Information Infrastructure’

**Data requests**

Maintain and strengthen the bottom-up approach we already have in place via ODUG and Data.gov.uk which allows data businesses and others to request particular datasets which are crucial to their business

**Central release**

Continue to press centrally for the release of particular ad-hoc datasets that provide the opportunity for transformational benefits for UK citizens, even if these would struggle to be defined as the main datasets from within each Government department. What have we committed to on the National Information Infrastructure in the Gov Response to the Shakespeare Review?

- **Set out a collaborative process** for identifying those datasets which should be part of the ‘National Information Infrastructure’. This process will be driven by assessing data held by departments against criteria (see later).

- **Publish NII criteria** for comment on Data.gov.uk and inviting comment on them.

- **Set out the data we already have** by department and invite comment from business users about what data they would like released.

- **Highlight those which are of the highest priority**, and establishing when and how they will be released.

- **Work with those departments who have already undertaken a dataset inventory to develop guidance for other departments** on how to develop their inventory.

- **Work with departments** to complete this process so that we have a full set outlined for UK OGP National Action Plan in October. We committed to working with the following parts of government and other stakeholders

- **The Public Sector Transparency Board** and broader **Sector Transparency Boards**

- **The National Archives** (TNA) who has developed and maintains criteria and guidance to assist public sector bodies in defining their respective public tasks

- **The Government Chief Scientific Adviser** and the **National Statistician**, who are interested in identifying those datasets of critical importance, whether for national security, responding to emergencies or more widely informing public debate, and who will conduct a review to extract this subset of data

- **The UK Government Linked Data Working Group** which will be able to advise departments on those datasets which would aid in connecting and unlocking the potential of other data sets

- **The Open Data User Group** who will be able to channel requests from business and the public

- **Defra** given their implementation lead on INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) directive

## Criteria for a National Information Infrastructure

| Economic Growth | Social Growth | Effective Public Services | Connective Reference Data | Other Key Data | |-----------------|---------------|---------------------------|---------------------------|---------------| | • If open, could it stimulate growth in the UK economy?\
• Is it being requested by business?\
• Would it enable more efficient functioning of markets and reduce the cost of living for citizens?\
| • Is it requested by campaigning groups?\
• If open, would it help stimulate volunteering and self-help?\
• Could it aid in promoting social development and change?\
| • Which data are fundamental to the operation of each department?\
• Could it be used to hold government to account?\
• If open, could it aid the efficiency of public services and the running of government?\
• Could it aid the public in making choices about which public services to use?\
• Is the government the sole owner of this information, or is uniquely well placed to provide the data?\
| • If open would it aid in connecting and unlocking the potential of other data sets?\
| • Is it considered to have broad importance outside the above criteria?

Three stages leading to National Information Infrastructure

1. **Identify** all data held and owned by Departments

   Departments will need to identify data which they or their Arms Length Bodies hold and own and make available a list of those datasets not published through Data.gov.uk.

2. **Prioritise** data in collaboration with users

   Having identified held and owned, departments will assess each dataset according to a range of criteria. Users will also be able to assess these datasets against the same criteria on Data.gov.uk.

3. **Release** data which has been prioritised

   Once departments and users have been able to contribute to the prioritisation of data in the inventory, key datasets which are considered important will be released as open data as part of the UK Open Government Partnership Action Plan.

# Timetable until October

| From now | Depts and ALBs should update Data.gov.uk to ensure that all data they publish is recorded on Data.gov.uk. Guidance on how to do this is available [here](#). | |----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | w/c 15th July | Transparency Team will make available to departmental contacts:\
• data dumps of records currently available through Data.gov.uk\
• a template for the spreadsheet to upload unpublished data\
• where relevant a copy of the HMT Data Review spreadsheets\
• outstanding data requests | | From 5th August | Start to upload unpublished data with new tranches added every Friday until 30th August\
Launch of functionality on Data.gov.uk which will allow assessment of all datasets against NII criteria. | | By 30th August | Complete uploading of unpublished data to Data.gov.uk | | By 2nd September | Departments to complete assessment of datasets against criteria on Data.gov.uk | | By 16th September | Complete analysis of datasets within National Information Infrastructure | | 23rd September | Report to Public Sector Transparency Board | | 7th October | Start Cabinet Committee Clearance for proposed National Information Infrastructure | | 31st October | Publication of the National Information Infrastructure in the UK OGP Action Plan |